Chapter
12

HEART PREPARATION
NECESSARY

"For nothing
reaches the heart but what is from the heart or pierces the conscience
but what comes from a living conscience." - William Penn

In the morning
was more engaged in preparing the head than the heart. This has been frequently
my error, and I have always felt the evil of it especially in prayer.
Reform it then, O Lord! Enlarge my heart and I shall preach." -Robert
Murray McCheyne

"A sermon
that has more head infused into it than heart will not borne home with
efficacy to the hearers."
- Richard Cecil

PRAYER, with its
manifold and many-sided forces,
helps the mouth to utter the truth in its fullness and freedom. The preacher
is to be prayed for, the preacher is made by prayer. The preacher's mouth is
to be prayed for; his mouth is to be opened and filled by prayer. A holy mouth
is made by praying, by much praying; a brave mouth is made by praying, by much
praying. The Church and the world, God and heaven, owe much to Paul's mouth;
Paul's mouth owed its power to prayer.

How manifold, illimitable, valuable, and helpful prayer is to the preacher in
so many ways, at so many points, in every way! One great value is, it helps
his heart.

Praying makes the preacher a heart preacher. Prayer puts the preacher's heart
into the preacher's sermon; prayer puts the preacher's sermon into the preacher's
heart.

The heart makes the preacher. Men of great hearts are great preachers. Men of
bad hearts may do a measure of good, but this is rare. The hireling and the
stranger may help the sheep at some points, but it is the good shepherd with
the good shepherd's heart who will bless the sheep and answer the full measure
of the shepherd's place.

We have emphasized sermon-preparation until we have lost sight of the important
thing to be prepared -- the heart. A prepared heart is much better than a prepared
sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared sermon.

Volumes have been written laying down the mechanics and taste of sermon-making,
until we have become possessed with the idea that this scaffolding is the building.
The young preacher has been taught to lay out all his strength on the form,
taste, and beauty of his sermon as a mechanical and intellectual product. We
have thereby cultivated a vicious taste among the people and raised the clamor
for talent instead of grace, eloquence instead of piety, rhetoric instead of
revelation, reputation and brilliancy instead of holiness. By it we have lost
the true idea of preaching, lost preaching power, lost pungent conviction for
sin, lost the rich experience and elevated Christian character, lost the authority
over consciences and lives which always results from genuine preaching.

It would not do to say that preachers study too much. Some of them do not study
at all; others do not study enough. Numbers do not study the right way to show
themselves workmen approved of God. But our great lack is not in head culture,
but in heart culture; not lack of knowledge but lack of holiness is our sad
and telling defect -- not that we know too much, but that we do not meditate
on God and his word and watch and fast and pray enough. The heart is the great
hindrance to our preaching. Words pregnant with divine truth find in our hearts
nonconductors; arrested, they fall shorn and powerless.

Can ambition, that lusts after praise and place, preach the gospel of Him who
made himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a servant? Can the
proud, the vain, the egotistical preach the gospel of him who was meek and lowly?
Can the bad-tempered, passionate, selfish, hard, worldly man preach the system
which teems with long-suffering, self-denial, tenderness, which imperatively
demands separation from enmity and crucifixion to the world? Can the hireling
official, heartless, perfunctory, preach the gospel which demands the shepherd
to give his life for the sheep? Can the covetous man, who counts salary and
money, preach the gospel till he has gleaned his heart and can say in the spirit
of Christ and Paul in the words of Wesley: "I count it dung and dross;
I trample it under my feet; I (yet not I, but the grace of God in me) esteem
it just as the mire of the streets, I desire it not, I seek it not?" God's
revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and strength
of human culture, the brilliancy of human thought, the force of human brains
to adorn or enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility,
and faith of a child's heart.

It was this surrender and subordination of intellect and genius to the divine
and spiritual forces which made Paul peerless among the apostles. It was this
which gave Wesley his power and radicated his labors in the history of humanity.
This gave to Loyola the strength to arrest the retreating forces of Catholicism.

Our great need is heart-preparation. Luther held it as an axiom: "He who
has prayed well has studied well." We do not say that men are not to think
and use their intellects; but he will use his intellect best who cultivates
his heart most. We do not say that preachers should not be students; but we
do say that their great study should be the Bible, and he studies the Bible
best who has kept his heart with diligence. We do not say that the preacher
should not know men, but he will be the greater adept in human nature who has
fathomed the depths and intricacies of his own heart. We do say that while the
channel of preaching is the mind, its fountain is the heart; you may broaden
and deepen the channel, but if you do not look well to the purity and depth
of the fountain, you will have a dry or polluted channel. We do say that almost
any man of common intelligence has sense enough to preach the gospel, but very
few have grace enough to do so. We do say that he who has struggled with his
own heart and conquered it; who has taught it humility, faith, love, truth,
mercy, sympathy, courage; who can pour the rich treasures of the heart thus
trained, through a manly intellect, all surcharged with the power of the gospel
on the consciences of his hearers -- such a one will be the truest, most successful
preacher in the esteem of his Lord.